Research Paper Blog Post

by: Reid Blackwell

Johnny Manziel is known as an enigmatic and often puzzling young athlete. After a successful yet troubling college career, the Cleveland Browns drafted him at the 20th pick in 2014. Since then, Manziel has made over $7 million in three seasons despite only playing in 15 games in two years. He has numerous on and off the field problems, including drug use, obscene gestures and remarks towards players and fans along with many other mistakes, some of which have resulted in fines from the NFL.

 

Now out of a job and seemingly nearing the end of his cash flow, Manziel is attempting to make his NFL comeback despite recent events that included him apologizing for his behavior in 2016 and deleting his Twitter after making remarks towards President Donald Trump (TMZ Sports).

 

 

Building on this review of the literature, this study addresses the following research questions:

  1. What image repair strategies did Johnny Manziel use in his social media forums?
  2.  How did the mainstream media respond to the scandal and Manziel’s image repair strategies?
  3. How effective overall were the image repair strategies that Manziel used?

 

For our methods we researched archived Tweets from 2016 to January 2017 (the time he deleted his Twitter). We also researched his Facebook posts and all other forms of social media. We found articles such as “Johnny Manziel Explains Why He Deleted Twitter After Donald Trump Advice” (NESN.com), and “LOOK: Johnny Manziel unleashes flurry of tweets, says trying to be good person” (cbssports.com) very helpful in our research methods as well.

 

 

After analyzing the tactics and PR strategies Manziel has made, Jeff and I have concluded that Manziel has been using mortification as his first step towards image repair. We believe that this is in his best interest as he admitted in a tweet posted on January 19, 2017, saying that he was “trying to be a good person again.” Manziel has taken a good step in repairing the outlook media have portrayed him in.

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